In early May, the Rotary Club of Peachtree City hosted 24 GRSP students and four additional international students from UGA for a final weekend together before the students begin their last travels across the US and return to their home countries. The students arrived on Friday to a dinner / pool party hosted at the beautiful home of PTC Rotarian Gordon Fleming and his wife Christine. After the fellowship on Friday night, the students split among host families with 10 students staying with the Flemings, two students staying with GRSP Trustee Cyndi Plunkett and 18 students with Immediate Past President/Assistant Governor Steve Ivory.

On Saturday morning, the students split into teams on eight golf carts - all donated by Rotarian Patti Kadkhodaian (Owner, Golf Rider) and Rotarian Chavdar Zdravkov (Owner, GolfCart Masters).  With the help of Chavdar (Civics Project Coordinator) and Steven Newton (Community Service Chair), the students split time among four different projects -working alongside Rotarians to clean-up and paint city properties sponsored by the Rotary Club. This was well received and efforts were recognized by Mayor Kim Learnard on the city’s social media platforms.

To add fun, the teams had a scavenger hunt around the golf cart paths. Intense competition between the teams, but one team amazingly completed all 25 items!  The winning team had a little help from long-time PTC resident and Rotarian Tammy Soulakos and included Thomas Carlsten and Hanna Larsen from Norway, Sofie Bohl from Sweden and Csenge Tar from Hungary. The winning team won Mary Poppins District 6900 umbrellas and the second place team received Chick-fil-a or Starbucks gifts cards.

After a great lunch at Partners II Pizza, the team headed back to Steve Ivory’s home to spend the afternoon socializing and writing in each other’s personal books about the great year they have experienced through the GRSP program.  On Saturday evening, the Flemings hosted again and with the help of President Adam Glendye, had an awesome Georgia barbeque highlighted by banana pudding from Rotarian Paige Munk (district conference attendees will remember this from our progressive dinner evening).  The evening was spent swimming, singing karaoke, spending time by the bonfire and saying final goodbyes to each other.

It was a very unique and rewarding experience for the Rotarians and the GRSP students to have this one final weekend together. Thanks to all of the GRSP host families and clubs across the state who helped with the logistics for the weekend for these students!  It was such a fun and memorable weekend.